Word Count: 360
The mountains drip cherry trees down their scattered slate chins. The weeds and small brush clamber uphill like groupies, wild in their adoration of the rock star tall trees.
It’s a peaceful and natural setting. No one would think so at night when the woods mumble and grumble at the loss of the sun. When fur slithers against bark, brushing leaves into a whisper of gossip and warning. When black eyes glint with the crescent of moonlight and whiskers catch the soft touch of a breeze.
The man felt at home there, the mountains like ancestral love, each tree a sibling, the earth warm with the milk of a mother’s breast. He was born in the hollow beneath a black walnut tree, his first scream of life rang into the sky. He learned all the tricks of the wind, the replenishment of rain, the anger of thunder and lightning. He knew well each blanket of season, the lush green of spring, the cold soft white of winter. He was the son of a woman who had slept with the forest.
Perhaps if he’d known more of the world, knew other people, recognized the threads he shared with mankind, he might not have been so protective, though that’s natural instinct too. His mother had taught him all that she could, to be wary of bear and the big cats, but to hold all four-legged creatures and those that flew with respect. He grew up tall and strong as his brothers, his only enemy the same one as that of all living things in the woods. The one being he felt no kinship with, man.
But he watched the few that came through his forest. He learned when they slept, when they were on the move. What they ate. He felt a certain empathy, could almost understand them, but the more he learned the more he understood his mother’s wariness and her wisdom of their ways.
So he never established that bond with them as he had with all other creatures and never felt more than a momentary stab of regret as he gave thanks to the mountain after the hunt.
